


comes for you

by Lilaciliraya



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: College, Gen, Love, University, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24333340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilaciliraya/pseuds/Lilaciliraya
Summary: this is how spencer learns to love: he watches.watches hands shake and walls fall and.lists unravel.watches. waits.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 41





	comes for you

**Author's Note:**

> im graduated and fucking sad.

this is how spencer learns how to love: he watches. 

watches as his father packs his bags and gently shuts the door behind him.

presses his nose to the glass of the living room window and doesn’t blink as the car that used to take him to school disappears down the road and turns away forever.

watches his mother dissolve away into someone she never wanted to be. 

watches as the world burns around him.

he watches and he waits and he goes to school and watches watches watches with glazed eyes and a wandering mind as things he already knows are paraded in front of him day after day after day.

watches words flip away with page after page in the books he devours. watches as everything leaves him behind.

spencer has always been a bright child.

-

criminals come and go and come and come and are locked away. they spring up endlessly. he watches the aftermath of murder after murder- gruesome bodies being wheeled away again and again and again. it never ends. none of it.

they can’t stop the bad from soaking through the lives of everyone they meet. 

he watches as tobias hankel paces and paces.

he watches. he learns. this is what love does. this is what life is.

he is sick of it. already.

-

they say that children that cannot feel the love of the village will burn it down around them to feel its warmth. 

spencer is tired of watching himself slowly die in his bathroom mirror. he loves so much. it’s just- twisted. it's the fact that he has it all wrong and he knows it. 

it’s just. killing him.

nobody loves him back.

so maybe he’ll-

maybe-

he can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t-

-

he's sick of people playing by rules he's never heard. 

by rules no one ever told him.

he's sick of never being considered.

they play and play and play their games- and he never understands. 

it's his job to.

but. 

\--

spencer writes lists.

things he needs to learn:

how to cure mom  
how to make friends  
how not to hate myself  
how to stop being the novelty  
the reason for having social media  
how to cook  
bessel functions  
how to keep going  
how not to be so, so angry all the time.

(all the fucking time)

it’s a work in progress.

sometimes he hangs them up and sometimes he burns them. 

the important lists are always written in permanent marker- bronze, because he has it and it makes a statement and his memory is particularly drawn to its specific hue.

he should probably be going through the lectures he’s missed but he can’t stop thinking- if only if only i know, if only--- and 

how much could he accomplish? if he was a more like a machine- if he wasn’t-

the thing is that spencer is so, so consumed by his emotions.

he may not know innately how to love but- he feels so much all the time and he can’t keep working working working and without stopping to contemplate-

he wishes he understood. 

all of it. 

but he thinks it’s all another mystery.

another list, perhaps. 

(what i need to know: everything.)

((the things i understand completely, unconditionally: nothing))

((nothing at all))

(((what i am learning: love, maybe.)))

-

his roommate goes home for the weekend and he thinks: why.

wonders: risk versus reward.

thinks: is this love?

does it belong on his list?

it’s different. everyone is different, he’s noticed. it makes no sense. he has tried to apply rules but there are always exceptions. life is so complex, and he knew this, but. he doesn’t know how to navigate it. 

-

this is how he learns to love. a phone call when mom is admitted and a message passed along for graduation: ‘congrats, kiddo’. from his mother. who- he hadn’t known they’d been in contact, but. 

his chest aches as he tries to breathe. 

-

he applies to the fbi and the last days he spends on campus are- odd. 

he walks the same sidewalks he yearned to leave and he misses them, the feeling of permanence back when he couldn't picture this day, when he thought he’d never make it out. when he was young. when it was okay that he didn't know things. 

he remembers how every year he’d thought it was his worst and yet he’d outdone himself every time by making his situation worse and worse and worse- withdrawing and refusing to advance in social conventions year after year until he was so behind he felt shame every time he walked out of his front door.

he has always stood out. 

that’s- fine.

-

he loves the way his feet smack against the earth as he walks and walks and -

he thinks that's right- isn't sure but, his education is lacking in some ways. 

he’s all full up of institutional knowledge but he’s never found a course on the meaning of connection, of attraction, of desire, of  
.

that’s why he’s so curious. it’s all relative. everyone learns it in their own way- it is completely subjective. he has never been good at that. 

he wants to understand this. 

-

he goes to work and catches the unsubs and he gets it.

he does.

maybe too much, but.

he never really understands why.

he never really feels it- anything.

(anything at all.)

-

the problem is spencer has always wanted to love something- never thought he did- figured he wasn’t capable-

but his idea of love was so skewed and he could never distance himself enough because he loved everyone his life touched, but never in the way he’d seen what he thought love was--

he was so, so wrong,,

and his heart was spread so thin because he never knew it needed protection.

he loved so pure because he’d never, ever call it that. he couldn’t help it.

he bled for the state of the world and was crushed underneath it.

the sun rose and set.

(he loved but was never, ever loved back.)

-

things worth loving:

the garden the person in the dorm across his keeps up along their windowsill  
his mother and the way she always encouraged him  
himself, probably

(maybe)

it’s a work in progress.

-

he goes to class, goes to class, goes to class.

zones out.

nothing is new, anymore.

nothing sparkles.

nothing ignites that fire inside of him, the one he used to have. the one that made him special, made him different, made him suffer.

and what was the point of it all if it just ruined his life and then disappeared. why did he have to suffer if it would never see the light of day. never change the world. never find that cure to schizophrenia that he promised- he  
\- he’d discover.

what was point of all those years. all of that suffering?

to make him this?

this hollowed out shell of desperation?

of fleeting connections that re-wired his being into a long term attachment that could never be healthy? of yearning, yearning, yearning.

of aching.

and imagining. 

imagining those times he could have saved them. have saved everyone. 

could have made a difference in this bleak reality. monotony. 

this. 

void.

where people like him are swallowed whole.

what was the  
point?

(he swears when the situation calls, he does. 

nobody ever believes this, but)

-  
he used to feel so much. used to- cry and dream and ache.

used to spend days and nights thrashing with the injustice of it all- used to.

used to. 

used to, once. then. 

before.

(before the routine. the desensitization.)

((the introduction and conclusion.))

-

it is monday and that means-

hangover-

means shaking hands,

means anxiety.

means other people again.

means class and waiting and begging- begging the universe for some kind of relief. 

means disappointment.

all he ever does is wait. for something better, for something more. for something worth all of this.

maybe that’s just a pipe dream. maybe there is no reason for him to endure any of it any longer.

but maybe there is. so. he does. 

so. he carries on.

so he slugs through classes and days and nights until the month when he visits his mother again and he can make her smile. 

until he makes a joke to the grocery store clerk and makes them laugh.

until the year when he’ll finally, finally, leave this town and start over, and maybe he’ll be someone different there. maybe he will matter. 

but he does’t know how.

so.

maybe he's just fooling himself. 

probably.

statistically. 

-

one day he will die and all of his moments will be remembered and he will be judged.

this terrifies him.

-

if he died in his dorm room right now, nobody would find him for weeks at the earliest. it’s a single because of his age, because he doesn’t belong, not really.

and nobody would text him and nobody would miss him in class and nobody would smell him until his body really started rotting. until his story was a tragedy. until it was embarrassing and pathetic and the situation would have made him glad to be dead just so he didn’t have to feel the shame of it.

but now that he's considered it he feels that humiliation just as strong. 

that’s the boy he's made himself. 

the life he has brought into existence. the story he has paved and sought to tell.

what a waste. 

-

maybe this is love: the knowing. 

maybe this is all there is.

maybe. 

maybe this is something he will never know. 

the end is coming for him. coming too fast for him to prepare. for him to learn it all. 

to understand.

-


End file.
